Emergence of excitonic superfluid at topological-insulator surfaces*

Excitons are spin integer particles that were predicted to condense into a coherent quantum state at sufficiently low temperature more than 50 years ago. Nonetheless, transport of exciton condensates is not yet understood and it is unclear whether an exciton condensate is a superfluid or an insulating electronic crystal. Topological insulators (TIs) with massless particles and unique spin textures have been theoretically predicted as a promising platform for achieving exciton condensation. Here we report experimental evidence of excitonic superfluid phase at the surface of three-dimensional (3D) TIs. We unambiguously confirmed that electrons and holes are paired into charge neutral bound states by the electric field independent photocurrent distributions. And we observed a millimetre-long transport distance of these excitons up to 40 K, which strongly suggests dissipationless propagation. The robust macroscopic quantum states achieved with simple device architecture and broadband photoexcitation at relatively high temperature are expected to find novel applications in quantum computations and spintronics.